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Our View: The anti-American president

Barack Obama is now incessantly demonstrating and articulating his disdain and hatred for free enterprise and capitalism at every turn.

His words and actions are anti-American, anti-individualism. He is pure despotic, the poster boy for government dependency and centralized, Marxist control.

It’s really scary. Call-to-arms alarming.

With every dictatorial decree — the latest his arbitrary executive order to wipe out portions of Bill Clinton’s welfare law without congressional approval — Obama increasingly resembles the Third World socialist, anti-capitalist despots in the vein of Hugo Chavez and, dare we say, the Castro brothers. Capricious, confiscatory tyrants.

Too extreme of a characterization?

Sample portions of Obama’s Friday speech about entrepreneurism and success in the accompanying box. Judge for yourself.

The underlying, and yet clearly blatant, message there is “the government” is responsible for everyone’s success.

As Obama sees it, individuals — with their own rational minds and choices and effort — never achieve or build or grow without the hand of the government. They never do it without the government hand that takes wealth from one and redistributes it, munificently, to another.

We could fill this page and more of names of successful people on Longboat Key who made their achievements happen, who built businesses because of their individual efforts, not because of government handouts.

Yes, many of them received help along the way. But in the vast majority of those instances, that help came in the form of a fair exchange, because one helped the other. Business success in the free-enterprise system is always built on the free, peaceful, mutually beneficial exchange between two parties. Two parties acting in their own, rational, self interest.

Take that alleged “great teacher.” If you had one, you were not given that teacher. You paid for her or him — through taxes or tuition. You may have learned great lessons from that teacher, but that teacher was not responsible for what you learned or the actions you took to succeed. Those were your actions, your effort.

If you’re an entrepreneur who obtains startup capital for a business, you are not given that capital. It is a free, peaceful, fair trade — the investor’s capital in exchange for what he believes will be a fair return on his capital. And that return is contingent on the entrepreneur’s ingenuity and ability to make his business a success, his own effort.

“Somebody invested in roads and bridges,” Obama said. Those roads and bridges came out of the sweat and toil and labor of every taxpayer. They didn’t come from “the government.”

To hear the anti-free-enterprise, the anti-individual, the anti-American words come out of this president is beyond belief, especially so for those of us who believe the tenets of the Declaration of Independence — that we, as individuals, are endowed by our Creator with the inalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That is, the right to live free and the right to our property, by our own effort.

It is un-American for the president of the United States to say what Obama says. Indeed, the president of the United States should be, must be this nation’s biggest champion for the American Dream, that you can go as far and as high as your efforts will take you.

Believers in free enterprise and the American Dream, this is a call to arms.

ANTI-CAPITALIST,
ANTI-INDIVIDUAL,
ANTI-AMERICAN

“If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own … “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges.

“If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. (italics added)
“The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”

— Barack Obama

+ The fix was inA week ago, at the topping off ceremony at the new Publix store, the Town Hall rumor machine was whirring: Terry Gans, the buzz went.

While some of the Town Commission hopefuls — hoping to be appointed to replace retiring Commissioner Hal Lenobel — were updating their resumes and making calls for support, the early handicappers had tagged Longboat Key Planning and Zoning Board Chairman B.J. Webb as the likely appointee.

But word spread quickly at the topping-off ceremony that Webb declined. Gans was the pick.

And so he was.

This is an unusual choice as far as Longboat Key tradition goes. The common pedigree of Longboat Key commissioners is that before reaching the dais, commissioners serve on one a town board or two — planning and zoning, zoning board of adjustment, code enforcement. Gans hasn’t.

But he is a recognized name and voice around Town Hall. For the past several years, the retired grocery chain executive has been a fixture at Town Commission meetings, and from time to time he has written cogent, well-argued opinion columns for this newspaper. One of his key attributes: strong common sense.

That’s always a good trait to have on the Town Commission. We shall see. Good luck, Terry Gans.

+ Marines not created equalEver vigilant over the challenges that his beloved U.S. Marine Corps face, retired Marine Col. John Saputo is not one who takes well the idea of lowering Marine Corps’ standards.

No surprise, then, he opposes the latest movement from a Department of Defense advisory board for the Marines to allow female Marine lieutenants to lead infantry platoons in combat — a position female lieutenants do not hold because of the physical demands.

In this month’s edition of the Marine Corps Gazette, Marine Capt. Katie Petronio, a combat engineer officer with five years of service and combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, writes:

“I am here to tell you that we are not all created equal, and attempting to place females in the infantry will not improve the Marine Corps as the Nation’s force-in-readiness or improve our national security.

“Who is driving this agenda? I am not personally hearing female Marines, enlisted or officer, pounding on the doors of Congress claiming that their inability to serve in the infantry violates their right to equality … This issue is being pushed by … a small committee of civilians appointed by the secretary of defense … It’s very surprising to see that none of the committee members is on active duty or has any recent combat or relevant operational experience relating to the issue they are attempting to change.”

Capt. Petronio was highly regarded for her work in Iraq and Afghanistan, building 18 patrol bases. But she writes that the physical strains of that job caused an ovarian syndrome, leaving her infertile.

Concludes Petronio: “I can say with 100% assurance that despite my accomplishments, there is no way I could endure the physical demands of the infantrymen whom I worked beside …”